IBLOG SPACE

Sometimes the job listing that big companies post like Microsoft and others can give hints of what the company is working on. Often they start looking for key employees and engineers for specific functions before a project gets underway. A recent job listing from Microsoft that tipped up over the weekend is looking for an engineer. The engineer is for a “top secret” project that the Windows Phone 7 team is working on. What is that project? The job listing doesn’t say, but the listing notes that the project is a v1 feature set with planning for the features to be complete in the next month. The listing for the job states that the mission of the project is to “GO BIG! DISRUPT THE MARKET!” WinRumors reports that the listing appears to be government and security related. I wonder what the project is Microsoft is working on. What do you think? Does a job listing for a position supposedly centering on security and government sound like something that will disrupt the market to you? The job l

When Nintendo went on the record with its next generation console called the Wii U at E3 this year we knew that word would start coming before long of the other big gaming firms working in new consoles of their own. The first we grumblings heard of after the Wii U was the next generation Xbox console from Microsoft that is being called the Xbox 720 for now. AMD has come out and stated that the next Xbox will have some very impressive graphics. According to AMD, the graphics on the console will be of the level of the smash-hit Avatar movie that put 3D on the map in a big way. Along with the graphics at Avatar levels of detail, AMD’s Neal Robison also claims that the next generation game console will also allow for higher degrees of game AI. This power will allow the game AI to give each of the characters on the screen their own mentality. That means in Grand Theft Auto for instance whipping out your gun and shooting won’t see all the characters on screen do the same thing. Microsoft sti

The Toshiba Thrive tablet hit stores earlier this month and the tablet has been popular with users since the launch. On the Toshiba Forums, there are pages of users that are all reporting the same issue with the Thrive. Apparently, the tablet isn’t waking from sleep mode when the users press the wake button. The tablet stays in sleep mode and the only way to wake the tablet so it can be used is to reboot it. That isn’t exactly a huge issue. However, it is an issue nonetheless. There was a reported workaround to fix the issue that had to do with removing the battery. The users that tried that fix report that the workaround doesn’t work. Another user tried resetting the tablet using the factory reset feature and that didn’t fix the issue either. It sounds like something in the firmware. Toshiba is asking the users on the forum that are having the issue to give it details such as how often the device is not waking and what version of the Thrive they are using. It seems the wake issue is o

There are a bunch of green electric cars on the market today and a few electric motorcycles. The thing that most of those electric motorcycles have in common is that they have a very modern and racy look to them. Take theMission R electric motorcycle we have talked about before, it looks like a racing motorcycle. Some will like that style and some won’t. If you are more the cruiser sort that wants a bike with old school style, the new bike from Orphiro may be your ride. The bike looks like one of the old Harley or Britt bikes from the 60′s to me. It’s not totally old-fashioned looking but has a retro style that so many cars are using today. The company Orphiro is Dutch and calls the design of the bike a wide-body cruiser. It crams the lithium-ion batteries inside that wide body. The electric motors have a total of 72V of power. The top speed for the bike is 75 mph so it has enough speed to drive on most roads without being run over or getting the rider the finger for going to slow. The

Details of the Sonos S3 aka the Play:3 wireless nightstand speaker last seen crossing through the FCC have leaked, courtesy of a prematurely posted Amazon product page. Since yanked – but still available in Google’s cache - the page detailed the Sonos Play:3 and described it as a “smaller, sexier, tuck in a corner and blow out the roof, all-in-one player.” Smaller than the existing Sonos S5, the S3/Play:3 is a three driver speaker system, according to Amazon, consisting of three digital amps, a tweeter, two mid-range drivers and a bass radiator. Functionally it’ll be more of what we’ve already seen from Sonos: easy streaming from your own music, whether stored on a computer or a NAS, along with internet radio access, all controlled either from the company’s dedicated remotes or – probably more appealing to the S3 customer – the free apps for Android and iOS devices. “The smaller, sexier, tuck in a corner and blow out the roof, all-in-one player. Wirelessly stream your entire itunes lib

iriver’s Story HD ereader – which we reviewed this past weekend – may be shouting most about its Google eBookstore access, but that integration also has a useful side-effect if you want to get online in a pinch. Turns out, the eBookstore isn’t baked in as an app, but accessed via a special website; The Digital Reader discovered that, after a little link-jumping, you can access a full Google search and the rest of the internet too. The trick is to go to the Help page from the eBookstore on the Story HD, then use the default links running across the top of the screen. Selecting “Books” takes you to books.google.com, at which point you can then choose “Web” and get to Google.com. As you’d expect, from that page you can search and go pretty much anywhere you like. Unfortunately, unlike the WebKit-based browser on the third-gen Kindle, the iriver app isn’t particularly internet-friendly. There’s no address bar, obviously, and if you want to move forward and back through your history, refres

Bored Android developer looking for something to do with your Monday morning? Google has you covered, releasing the Android 3.2 Honeycomb SDK. Tipped as fast-incoming back in late June, and since arriving for XOOM users, the updated version adds support for 7-inch Honeycomb tablets in addition to official microSD compatibility and other functionality. The screen size support will open the door to more flexibility in Android slates, with tablets like the Huawei MediaPad offering an in-betweener display option between phones and 8.9-inch tablets like the LG G-Slate. There’s also an interesting new “compatibility zoom” option, intended to make viewing smartphone apps on tablet hardware more pleasant. Rather than simply stretching the app to fill the screen, Android 3.2 can use pixel-scaling. Google has thrown in some API changes, too, along with releasing new versions of the SDK Tools, a newEclipse plug-in and updated NDK. If you don’t know what that all means then don’t worry; just expec

HTC’s QWERTY Facebook phone has gone on sale in the US, with AT&T offering the HTC Status for just $50 with a new agreement. The Android handset – which we reviewed as the HTC ChaCha - has a 2.6-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen above a very usable QWERTY keyboard, and offers a dedicated Facebook button designed to make sharing to the social network more straightforward. There’s also a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and autofocus, a front-facing camera for VGA-resolution video calls, and 7.2Mbps-capable HSDPA. HTC also throws in WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS, together with a microSD card slot which AT&T preloads with 2GB. OS is Android 2.3 Gingerbread with a customized version of HTC Sense designed to suit the landscape-aspect display. AT&T is asking $50 for the Status, though you’ll obviously need a new, two-year agreement and a mandatory data plan. Still, that puts it at the cheap end of Android devices, despite it being a solid handset with one of the better keyboards ar

Apple continues to shave away at the iPad 2 delivery delay, now bringing availability of the second-generation slate down to just 1-3 business days in the US. Despite it having launched several months ago, demand for the iPad 2 had always overwhelmed Apple’s own supply chain; only recently did Apple manage to get its delivery estimates down to 3-5 days. The improvement only currently appears to be affecting Apple’s North American online stores – the Canadian store is also down to 1-3 days – with orders elsewhere still demanding extra patience. In the UK, both the WiFi-only and 3G + WiFi models are listed at 3-5 days. Various unofficial explanations for Apple’s shortage of stock had been suggested, though unsurprisingly Apple itself declined to comment. Panel supplier LG Display was tipped to be experiencing lower than expected yields, at least of 9.7-inch screens that met with Apple’s exacting standards: rejected panels were believed to have shown more light leakage than the company pe

It’s that time again, ladies and gentlemen, time to ring the bell for several of our winners in a contest. The contest we’re dealing with right now has a total of FIVE Android tablets in it, each of them packed with a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor inside. We’ve got two left, and you know what that means: three have already been assigned to winners! Are any of them you? Come inside and see! Each of the following entries comes from a lucky soon-to-be recipient of a brand new Android tablet, one of them from Android Community and two of them from SlashGear. Each of these winners must contact us within the next 24 hours of this post being made, if they haven’t already, in order to claim their prize! If the winner is you, contact us QUICK via giveaway @ slashgear.com unless, again, you’re already in contact with us through some other means. If you do NOT contact us within 24 hours, we’ll be forced to give your prize away in a later contest! Below you’ll find one entry from Facebook and

Emily Price has an interesting piece on TechnoBuffalo about whether the Internet is killing our memory. In fact, she’s really talking about nostalgia, not recall memory in general, but it’s a fascinating topic worth some exploration. The real question is whether the existence of things in digital form or physical form is more pleasing to our recollection, and I do not think there is an easy answer. Undoubtedly, there are things that feel better in the hand than on the screen, and there are ways of storing valuable memories digitally that are more reliable than their physical versions. But I also wonder if this transition, from physical to digital memory, won’t also teach us that there are certain memories we should simply give up for good.

I received a little surprise yesterday from FedEx and it just so happened to be the Motorola Triumph that is headed to Virgin Mobile. The Triumph was first announced back in June, we were live in NYC for some hands-on time. For a little recap this is the Motorola Triumph and it’s headed to Virgin Mobile and my favorite part is this triumphant phone won the battle with Blur and will in fact be running stock Android 2.2 FroYo (aka Vanilla) and will look and run as Google intended. I’m excited already! Its not that I have anything against Motorola’s Blur or whatever you want to call its android UI overlay (shh i really don’t) its that I really just love stock vanilla Android. Toss that on a thin, simple and basic design like the Triumph and you might have a winner. Not to mention you get to pay as you go and get it off-contract over on Virgin. Anyone else liking the sound of this yet? It features a 4.1″ display, 5 MP shooter on the rear with VGA around front, it can record in full 720p an